An afternoon for all senses

Happy Bastille Day!

Yesterday I spent a lazy afternoon reading at home. Around 2pm my housemate came home with a backpack and a bucket full of produce. She had gone to the Marche d'Aligre right before it closed and gotten a ton of fruit (2 kinds of peaches, raspberries, pears, white and orange melons, pineapples) at steep discounts, since the market is closed today and the vendors want to get rid of it. She made 14 jars of jam--a big batch of white peach-raspberry and a smaller batch of yellow peach-pear (both are really delicious!). While she was doing this, the concert pianist who lives across the courtyard was playing, and then the opera singers started to practice as well.

I had heard about a 4-km stretch of train tracks over a viaduct that was converted into a narrow park--the Promenade des Plantes--so I decided to take a walk. It starts right behind the Bastille opera house (in my general neighborhood), and it is high above the streets in many parts, so you have a great view of eastern Paris. Plus, the various architectural elements along the path are really interesting--tunnels, bridges, overpasses-- and of course it's great landscaping. I walked to the end and back, and it was some of the best people-watching I have done so far. Here are a few photos of some things I saw--a series of larger-than-life Greek god statues perched on the side of a building (yeah, I have no idea what they are doing there) and a picnic-perfect park under a suspension bridge on the promenade.